[imagesource:pixabay]

Joshua Door might have been your uncle in the furniture business, but Jerry Martin is your man in the party snacks business. Welcome to The Drugs Store, a Vancouver shop that sells Heroin, Meth, MDMA, and Cocaine.

Before you begin a frantic search for your passport, it does however need to be said that although The Drugs Store is a true brick-and-mortar shop with a jingling bell over the front door, it is still considered illegal to sell the products on offer, so read on before booking your flight.

British Columbia has very progressive drug laws, and the Canadian province recently began a three-year ‘drug decriminalization pilot project’ for possession of small amounts of opioids, cocaine, meth, and MDMA.

Selling, however, still remains illegal. But this hasn’t stopped Martin from opening his store in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a neighbourhood that’s long been considered ground zero for Canada’s overdose epidemic.

The motivation behind this risky move was to allow drug users the option of getting their high from someone who doesn’t lace everything with rat poison or fentanyl, which has become the most used street opioid in Vancouver. Martin however rather sells heroin, hoping that he could help people stay away from Fentanyl, which is driving record overdoses in Canada and the U.S.

“People are dying. Especially now, they’ve allowed the entire province to do these drugs… But they’ve provided no clean, safe supply. They’re getting it from the same supply that everybody’s overdosing from.”

According to statistics, more than 11,000 British Columbians have died of a drug overdose since 2016 which prompted the government to look at alternatives to the outdated ‘war on drugs’ mantra that has seen little results and massive costs in the last few decades.

Martin is selling a max of 2.5 grams of each drug to potential buyers, which falls in line with the prescribed 2.5 grams allowed under the new decriminalization pilot. The cost for these drugs is also being kept within ‘street prices’ and a gram of Coke will set you back about $90 (R1 600), whereas Meth is a dirtier but cheaper option at $50 (R900) a gram.

All the drugs he’s selling have been tested at Get Your Drugs Tested, a Vancouver facility that uses a fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy machine to detect what’s in people’s drugs.

Buying the drugs involves producing your ID to verify that you are over 18, as well as signing a waiver to confirm that you have taken the specific drug before, and are aware of any potential health consequences, like dying.

The Drugs Store selling MDMA, cocaine, and more to open in #Vancouver today 👀 https://t.co/sW1dl8E9m3

— Daily Hive Vancouver (@DailyHiveVan) May 2, 2023

The Drugs Store’s in-house selection is however limited, and so Martin has started an online store that carries some products he doesn’t have on his shelves, such as ketamine, LSD, and 5-MeO-DMT, a synthetic version of a chemical that comes from the Bufo alvarius toad and is considered one of the most powerful psychedelics on Earth.

Opening a store that sells drugs was never going to be easy, and Martin has a criminal conviction for cannabis trafficking, which made getting financing for the venture a bit difficult. Finding a venue that would host his shop also proved understandably tough as few landlords wanted a drug-selling operation running from their premises.

Martin also wears a stab-proof vest and keeps a minimum supply of products inside the shop because, well, druggies.

With the rise in popularity of Fentanyl, the sourcing of heroin was particularly difficult and Martin recalls searching for more than two years before finding a steady, and trusted, supplier.

Since his entire business model is technically illegal, he fears being arrested at any moment, but Martin notes that his lawyer has already prepared a host of counter-arguments to present for any charges that may be laid against him.

“He would allege that laws that prevent a safe supply and result in death by poisoning contravene section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and must be struck down.”

In Canada, the maximum penalty for selling Schedule I or II drugs is life in prison. Martin says he was moved to open the store when his stepbrother, Gord Rennie, died of an overdose last year. He was found dead under a bridge. One of his other brothers was stabbed to death over drugs in 2000.

It really does seem as if the motivation for the store is not just to get rich of people’s addictions, but to at least give addicts the option of safer drugs, and perhaps a chance at rehabilitation through interventions that are always offered.

Karen Ward, a Vancouver-based independent drug policy analyst, said the store is an “inevitable result of the government doing nothing” in terms of setting up a widely accessible safe supply of all drugs.

Some believe the city should give Martin a license to operate legally, and regardless of your feelings about the drugs he sells, you have to agree that his approach is better than allowing desperate people to score ‘dirty’ drugs from dodgy dealers in dark alleys.

If you’re interested in the rise of fentanyl, the below Vice report is scary but, interesting to watch.

Who knows what the future will bring with a seemingly more relaxed attitude towards all kinds of drugs? Are we headed for a civilisation that’s zonked out of its mind most of the time, or will the honest approach to realities curb drug use in the coming decades?

The answer lies in whether you still want to search for your passport after reading about a drug store that would rather not have to exist if the owner had a choice.

[source:vice]